the United Cities of the World

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Looking at the accounts of the referendum and elections in 2016 in UK and the USA, you can observe clear indications of the poignant division of vote between populations in large cities and populations in the countryside. Not a new behaviour, but due to the significant global impact of these two instances I come to think that the time to tackle this situation is now due.

Considering that dwellers of large cities around the globe seem to have more in common than with each of their countrymen, a possible political development where cities bundle in a (UCW) United Cities of the World state of sorts seems not far fetched. In this scheme, country boundaries would be drawn around cities and not around countries and airports bridging large cities would not any more be international but domestic airports.

Incidentally we see an emergence in the significance of Mayors of large cities as being more autonomous, having more political impact and possibilities to cater to their citizens that national presidents have with their countrymen.

With these premises in mind, it strikes me that the governance of an hypothetical UCW ought to be more effective and more coherent than the governance of the USA or the EU. Ultimately, would enable a parting from partisanship and the raise of a government that executes closer to its citizens.

Such a new world order would mean a new division of wealth and infrastructure. We may come quickly to the impression that this would create a new global over wealthy state and let a near bankrupt countryside behind. Yet this does not necessarily have to be the outcome. Cities need all goods be imported from the countryside, but also need to sell high value products and services to those people outside the boundaries of the UCW.

Is it perhaps henceforth the next empire in earth one made of dwellers of large cities, with a common English language, a common libertarian and democratic ideology, and a mingling of all races and backgrounds? Distributed all over the world but all being a single ‘us’.